Washington D.C. is a strange place to be seized by the idea that America’s strength rests in small communities and that this strength is powered by our connection to food.

Our capitol is the nerve center of big ideas and policy decisions that affect billions of people around the world. And, while the restaurants are top notch, there probably isn’t enough food grown in the city to feed one large family.

But as I travelled with the Archipleys, Maj. General Mel Spiese and his wife Filomena, University of Vermont’s Dr. Jeffrey Spees, and VSAT graduates to Congressional offices, meetings with officials like USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, and even to our White House, where the group helped the First Lady plant the White House garden, the connection of community and food became clear as day.

A healthy relationship with the way we produce and consume our food is the foundation of our nation and determinative to the quality of our lives.

America’s finest agrarian writer, Wendell Berry, once wrote, “Anybody interested in solving, rather than profiting from, the problems of food production and distribution will see that in the long run the safest food supply is a local food supply, not a supply that is dependent on a global economy. Nations and regions within nations must be left free — and should be encouraged — to develop the local food economies that best suit local needs and local conditions.”

In these meetings while listening to the concerns of the veteran-farmers, I came to realize that much of what our leaders can do is turn loose the reins and start enabling citizens—rather than corporations—to feed each other.

And as our nation steps off of its war footing in the Middle East, we also have this perfect time to stop the disastrous war against our soil and our citizens, who are ultimately the victims of bad food policy.

Food is the foundation of life. It has defined every moment of our existence. It is the path to our salvation and our ruin, and is the portal to family, energy and health.

Yes, our trip to Washington, in the most narrow terms, was to raise awareness of the incredibly high capacity our vets have to solve our country’s core problems (like replacing a generation of farmers who average 60 years old), but my eyes have been opened once again by this special group of individuals.

An awakening is happening in America, and it is as simple as creating jobs that solve our actual needs and, in the process, restore the very fabric of our own bodies and our relationship with the very planet we inhabit.

That is the real message we brought to Washington D.C. this week and that is the message our high capacity veteran leaders are delivering to the nation they love every day.

Brazil’s National School Meals Programme (PNAE), which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Programme is using as a model to replicate in other countries, has forged a path directly linking the fresh produce harvested by small farmers with providing nourishment to 45 million schoolchildren in their country. Thirty percent of the food served in school meals are purchased from family farmers in the same local area as the school, thus eliminating the middlemen. This guarantees meals for school-age children/teens and improves the lives of 4.3 million small farmers. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, Archi's Acres could help to advocate for such a program here in the U.S.